Flesh and Stone (TV story)
Flesh and Stone 'is the fifth episode of the fifth series of ''Doctor Who. It was written by Steven Moffat, directed by Adam Smith and featured Matt Smith as the Eleventh Doctor and Karen Gillan as Amy Pond with Alex Kingston as River Song. Overview To be added Synopsis Clambering hopelessly through the wreckage of a critically damaged starliner, the Doctor, Amy and River are chased through an endlessly twisting artificial forest pursued by the Angels, with further dangers ever growing in the distance of the trees. With Amy incapacitated and left alone in the forest with the Angels surrounding her, the Doctor discovers that the situation is significantly worse than he had initially thought and that the Angels would likely be the kinder alternative... Plot After shooting out the gravity globe, the Doctor, Amy, River and Octavian and his clerics regain their composure on the outer hull of the wrecked Byzantium while at the bottom of the cavern, the Angels that were besieging them begin to regain their form. The Doctor unseals the Byzantium's hatch and everybody follows him inside. While he works on opening the bulkhead to the secondary flight deck, the power starts to cut out as the Angels start breaking into the ship. Since opening the bulkhead would entail the Doctor redistributing all power to it, including the lights, Octavian and his men open fire on the angels while he works and they evacuate into the next section. Octavian and his men attempt to seal the Angels out with magnetic clamps, to no avail. Unsealing a hatch at the far end of the room, the Doctor reveals the ship's oxygen supply, a factory designed to appear exactly like a forest to produce an on-board ecosystem which, he hopes, will provide an escape route. Taking note of the fact that Amy has been counting down from 10 for the last few minutes, the Doctor contacts Angel Bob and demands to know what they've done to her. The Angels start laughing at his claims that there isn't enough power for them to consume the entire ship when the Doctor turns to see the crack from Amy's bedroom wall spewing light throughout the room. While he examines it, he orders Octavian to get Amy and River out when he notices that the Angels have broken in. He tries to escape but one of them grabs his jacket and locks him in it's grip. He tries to insist to the Angels that they can't feed on the energy coming from the crack while he slips out of his jacket and takes off after the others. In the forest, Amy starts feeling weak and collapses. When the Doctor arrives, he and River do a medical scan on her and her vitals start dropping. Thinking back to when she stared into the projected Angel's eyes, he realises that the Angel used the chance to implant itself in her mind while her eyes were open on it. Octavian's men take up positions around the site as the Angels close in. To stop the Angel's advancement, the Doctor tells Amy to close her eyes and lessen it's power and, as soon as she does, her vitals start picking up again. Since it's too dangerous to move her, the Doctor has Octavian and his men stay with her while he and River go to the primary flight deck; however, Octavian ignores the Doctor and goes with them, leaving his men to watch Amy. Before he leaves, the Doctor tells Amy to remember what he told her when she was seven. On their way to the flight deck, Octavian tells the Doctor that his role is to ensure that River completes her mission to earn her pardon for a crime that had her placed in Stormcage Containment Facility. Using River's computer, the Doctor reads from it the point in time that the crack originated; 26 June 2010. Octavians' men continue to guard Amy while she is rendered immobile while the Angels start pulling the cybernetic "treeborgs" apart. The Doctor, River and Octavian make it to the hatch to the primary flight deck and work on getting it open. As the Angels advance on the clerics, a bright white light starts emanating through the forest and the Angels disappear. Leading cleric Marco sends his men Crispin and Philip to investigate the light. Against Marco's advisement, Amy opens her eyes for a moment to look at it herself and is stunned that it is still the same crack from her wall before collapsing and having her eyes closed again. Marco sends the other cleric Pedro to examine the light up close and Amy suggests that he wait for Crispin and Philip to come back, but Marco doesn't know who she's talking about. After Pedro goes, she mentions him too and Marco hasn't any idea who he is either. He gives Amy a comms device and, despite her pleas, goes to look himself. He keeps in touch for a short distance before he goes silent. Meanwhile, Octavian gets the door open and River clambers into the flight deck. He tries to get the Doctor to follow but is grabbed by an Angel from behind. Despite the Doctor's insistence against, Octavian tells him to leave and allow him to face his death with courage. While River attempts to get a broken teleport working again, the Doctor contacts Amy and says she has to make her way to the flight deck, even with her eyes shut and uses his sonic screwdriver to act as an auditory guide to fool the angels. He tells her she has to stay ahead of the time energy spilling from the crack or it will catch her and every moment of her existence will be wiped from history. As she makes her way to them, the Doctor tells River the only way to suspend the crack's effects is to feed it a complicated space-time event, suggesting he throw himself into it to satiate it. While Amy wanders through the forest, she is surrounded by Angels on the run from the time energy. As she maneuvers around them, she falls and drops the communicator alerting the Angels to her presence as she tries to find it blind. Before one Angel can grab her, River gets the teleport working and brings her to the flight deck. The Angels make it to the flight deck's bulkhead and address the Doctor, insisting that he sacrifice himself for the Angels to survive. The Doctor drops a subtle hint to Amy and River to hold on to something before grabbing something himself as the ship's artificial gravity fails and the Angels fall into the crack, closing it off for the time being. Later, the Doctor, Amy and River return to the TARDIS, the Angel in Amy's mind having been wiped from history along with the others. He also explains that she could remember the Angels and the clerics now that she is a time traveller. Since her mission was a failure and thus her pardon refuted, River tells the Doctor that they'll next meet when "the Pandorica opens" as she is picked up by a prison ship back to Stormcage. In the TARDIS, Amy decides to tell the Doctor what exactly she was running from when she joined him and asks him to bring her back home. In her bedroom five minutes after they left, she shows him her wedding dress, wearing which she is due to be married to Rory Williams in the morning. Feeling she needs comforting over the day's events, Amy attempts to make a move on the Doctor and he nervously fends her off. Citing his age and species, Amy ignores him and drags him into a kiss but the Doctor decides that she needs to be sorted out and drags her into the TARDIS. Looking at the clock, the time strikes midnight and the date changes to 26 June 2010, the date the cracks began - he disappears into the TARDIS... Cast * The Doctor - Matt Smith * Amy Pond - Karen Gillan * River Song - Alex Kingston * Octavian - Iain Glen * Bob - David Atkins * Marco - Darren Morfitt * Pedro - Mark Monero * Phillip - George Russo Crew To be added References To be added Story Notes To be added Continuity To be added Home video and audio releases To be added External Links * Official ''Flesh and Stone'' page on '''Doctor Who Website